Monday, October 15, 2007

Movement

I have been gently chastised for not blogging, so here I am jumping back into the blogging movement — that never-ending, burbling stream of drivel.

I have been reading Muriel Barbery's L'Elégance du Hérisson (see side bar) and wallowing in her beautiful prose. The novel is about movement and more specifically precise, fleeting beautiful movements.

My own movement recently has been from Bordeaux to Nantes and back again by train: movement from one city to another, from home to hotel, from family to colleagues, from frantic preparation of a conference paper to the restitution of the paper as a presentation. When I got back from Nantes late on Saturday evening, the house was full of friends glued to the frustratingly staccato movements of 30 men on a rugby pitch - no French flair fluidity there, I'm afraid.

Sunday was spent in Rions, a medieval village - watching the alarmingly rapid movement downstream of muddy water as we picnicked on the banks of the Garonne.

Then there's the planned movement south for our upcoming half-term holiday: flights to Granada are booked, now we just need a car and somewhere to sleep (suggestions?).

I'll resist the temptation to take up the discussion on bowel movements initiated by Sarah in the comments to that last post!

6 comments:

Wow! I feel guilty now – you have been busy! You see I think everyone else out there is just like me – someone who feels that much has been accomplished if I manage to take the washing out of the machine just before the mould tinges it a tad too green and I have to stick it back in again.

Anyway, Granada is another of those arabian night type of cities that I have always wanted to visit. It is supposed to be so incredibly beautiful. And the surrounding countryside looks beautiful too. It has that wild, barren, savage look. A sort of hot Scotland. Guy says that I compare everywhere to Scotland. I admit it – it's my yardstick.

So to be a bit more helpful

http://www.hostallaninfa.net

http://www.hotique.com/hotel-116-Hotel-Casa-Morisca.html

or a homestayhttp://www.granadahomestay.com/

The above three are all in the city

http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/Spain-Granada-Area-Andalucia-gh.htmand this is a site for guesthouses around and aboot.

Sarah: Thanks for links. I've been busy, busy and we've now got our tickets for the Alhambra, a villa in Salobrena on the coast below Granada and an amazingly cheap car for the week. Roll on Friday. Will let you know how it measures up to the gold standard of Scotland.

Deb: I took that photo after an evening out last March at the CIVB quaffing good red wine and then that restaurant where they seemed to go grill whole flock of ducks every evening (it has closed now, I see). It was just before you left on the Trans Siberian.

Thanks for jogging my memory, Lesley ... now I remember the CIVB moment very well and the table where we sat in the restaurant ... but what street was it in?

Jonathan, talking of cars and blue, last week when walking past a picture-framing shop in a back street near the centre of Bordeaux with my father we noticed a huge reproduction of a Vettriano painting. I'm always attracted to anything he does/the way he works.

It represented the back view of a man in front of a blue Bugatti-like car and you could see an 'e' and then Bird so I asked my father about Campbell and Blue Bird because I had a feeling my grandfather had known him. Neither of us could remember his first name.

We then went shopping, this time stopping on our way home in front of a card shop. You can buy cards with the date of your birth on them to see what happened that year. Out of curiosity we picked out 1933 because they didn't go further back than that (I was hoping to find 1916)!

The first thing that caught my eye was Malcolm Campbell broke the land speed record that year in Blue Bird at Daytona Beach.